---
title: She answered, 'Alas! death is gnawing at my heart. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: She answered, 'Alas! death is gnawing at my heart. Who acts: coverlet, death. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Third Evening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Third Evening, sentence 15

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She answered, 'Alas! death is gnawing at my heart.

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**Who acts:** coverlet, death · **What happens:** answer, gnaw · **To what, where:** Alas

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Third Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (coverlet, death), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:94:15
# text = She answered, 'Alas! death is gnawing at my heart.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	Alas	ala	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
7	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	gnawing	gnaw	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | coverlet | Alas |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **gnaw** | present · progressive | death |  |  |  |  | at my heart | vn chew-39.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent at heart=Patient |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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